# Microsoft outage: AI or cyber attack?

> Microsoft services globally disrupted as outage spreads.
- Title: Microsoft outage: AI or cyber attack? · Dailymail | Shortify
- Summary: Microsoft services globally disrupted as outage spreads. Microsoft's global outage affects email, AI tools and cloud services due to internal server…
- Keywords: breaking, microsoft, outage, teams, copilot, outlook, exchange online, cloud services, server overload, email disruption, ai services, Dailymail
- Source: Dailymail — https://dailymail.com/news/article-16289517/Microsoft-meltdown-AI-cyber-attack-questions-answered.html?ito=1490&ns_campaign=1490&ns_mchannel=rss
- Published: 2026-11-13T08:04:32+00:00
- Read time: 2 min
- Topics: breaking, microsoft, outage, teams, copilot, outlook, exchange online, cloud services, server overload, email disruption, ai services, news
## Microsoft outage
Microsoft users continued to experience disruption today as the tech giant worked to resolve outages affecting some of its most popular services.
## Affected services
Affected products include the instant messaging service Teams, the AI service Copilot, Outlook email and some aspects of its Cloud services.
## Outage scale
By 6pm UK time, Microsoft users had logged nearly 140,000 reports of issues with Outlook, more than 2,000 times normal levels.
## Global impact
The outage has affected customers worldwide, stopping email services even behind the 'Great Firewall' in China.
## Microsoft response
In a post on X, Microsoft says that it was 'continuing to work on' recovering services but there is no clear timeline for when they will be fully back to normal.
## Possible causes
Microsoft determined a number of servers failed during automated health checks and that its alternatives to bring those servers back online were not immediately taking effect.
## AI cause?
Dr Mark Gregory, associate professor of the School of Engineering at RMIT University, says: 'The Microsoft outage appears to have been caused by a misconfiguration of networking systems and infrastructure.'

> The Microsoft outage appears to have been caused by a misconfiguration of networking systems and infrastructure.
## Cyber attack?
Microsoft executive vice-president Charles Lamanna said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyber attack.
## Nvidia connection?
Microsoft is a major customer for these chips, having purchased more than 200,000 advanced AI chips in October last year, on top of 485,000 chips in 2024.
## Affected industries
In Westminster, MPs are reportedly unable to access their parliamentary accounts.
## Health services
The Aneurin Bevan University Health Board in Gwent, south-east Wales, said that it was 'aware of a global Microsoft outage which may be affecting our services'.
## Police services
Northamptonshire Police said in a post on X: 'Due to the global Microsoft outage please note that we do not have access to emails (Outlook).'
## Investor impact
Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at trading platform eToro, said investors would likely look past the outage but that repeated disruptions could hurt Microsoft over time.
## Global reach
The outage is affecting users across the Americas and parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.
## Email preservation
To help preserve delayed mail during this event, Microsoft has extended email timeout to 48 hours.
## What happened next
Microsoft is struggling to fix the widespread outage, with the company having acknowledged that efforts to restore services were 'not taking as expected'.
## Key takeaway

Microsoft's global outage affects email, AI tools and cloud services due to internal server overload, not AI or cyber attack.